It's crazy how many people who judge young kids behaviors and blame it on parenting skills are actually parents themselves! You would think having a child you would quickly realize that a lot of things are just the way the kid is, from birth and have no corolation with how they are disaplined or brought up. Some are but different kids have different personalities no matter what you do. I think wolverine is going to be super social and I am not at all. He already is trying to interact with other kids when he is around them. At the LLL meeting I went to the other night most of the babies there were around one give or take a few months. They were all running around socializing or not socializing whatever. When I was holding wolverine he just sat there looking bored and started to get squirmy. I put him on the ground and he was immediatly looking over to the little girl near him smiling and reaching out to her and watching her play. I could see in his little face how much he wanted to be able to play. So, I have noticed fast that when I do stuff like this he likes laying on the floor, feeling like he is part of the action.

I think most of us would agree that you don't allow an active drug addict around your child. But how do you feel about active alcoholics? And smokers?

At this point, we wouldn't have Leela around active smokers because of the third hand smoke and the SIDS risk, but I imagine it would be harder to justify not letting smokers be around her once she is older than it would be to justify not having an active alcoholic or drug addict around her.

what do you do?

_________________My oven is bigger on the inside, and it produces lots of wibbly wobbly, cake wakey... stuff. - The PoopieB.

I think you have to judge each situation as it comes up. When I was in Michigan we took grey to a family friends house, I had forgotten that the dad smokes. He only smokes in the garage and obviously I didn't have grey in the garage, but I am sure some leaks into the house. I felt ok about it, we were there for maybe an hour and outside part of the time and I couldn't smell any smoke. As far as active alcoholics, well, if we were at a Christmas party or something and someone waas an alcoholic I wouldn't not go because that person was there I just wouldn't let them hold grey if they had been drinking

Both of my sisters and my dad smoke and it disgusts me. They are not around Walter very often, but when they are I insist they wash their hands after smoking. They only smoke outside and in their cars; obviously I would never let Walter ride in their cars.

I have a hard time being around drunk people myself, so I don't imagine Walter will be around any.

We don't let the kids around people who are drunk. Light social drinking is fine, but if people are drinking to be drunk, that's not a situation they should be near. The smoking this is really difficult, becuase My MIL & her husband are both heavy, heavy smokers (8 packs a day. I'm not even exaggerating.). When they visit, they smoke outside only. When Silas was a baby, we were super careful about clean hands and no smoky smelling clothing, and they understood because he was so sick for so long with the RSV bronchiolitis, but now that he's older and healthy, it's more of a job to keep the smokiness away. I'm super allergic to cigarette smoke so I feel like I'm dying if I touch a phone they have used, so I'm hyper attuned to it and basically spend their entire visits convincing Silas to stay away from them when I smell smoke. It is not fun. (They'll be here in the morning.)

This is so interesting. The New Yorker had an article on colic, and part of what they touched on is that the parents (reinforced by those around them) decide very early on who is the "good" baby and who is the "difficult child" and those characterizations can color the entire relationship.

Totally anecdotal, but this is so my MIL with my husband and his sister. His sister was a "bad" baby (aka fussy, colicky) and they have always had an awful relationship. My MIL will flat out say that she never bonded with he daughter because she was so stressed out by how needy she was. My husband was a "good" baby (easy) and he's always been the golden boy. I'm sure there are other factors at work but I absolutely believe that those dynamics got started when they were infants. I want to read that article!

I think most of us would agree that you don't allow an active drug addict around your child. But how do you feel about active alcoholics? And smokers?

Alcoholism totally ruined my relationship with my mom, who is also an occasional smoker. She told me she didn't drink around babies and I'd just had Beetroot and she came to visit and after the first day, was drunk (she is a mean drunk, too) the whole time. Everybody got all cranky when I told her not to smoke around us and didn't want to sit by her when she was reeking of fags on the train.

8 months later (we live really far away) my parents came to visit again and the whole drinking/smoking thing started up again, even though everybody promised there would be no drinking and smoking and that I don't really understand the situation and she doesn't really drink like that most of the time. The whole visit was horrible (drunk and berating me in public and being generally mean and embarrassing) and my husband said he didn't want her to visit ever again! I told them I didn't want them to visit for a long time and wouldn't agree to a date for their next visit and they were SO miffed. (They are basically, for different reasons, not speaking to us anymore (it's been over a year). I am sure they know I had Raygold, but they haven't discussed it with me.)

But anyway, I wouldn't want my kids to be exposed to alcoholism and all the weirdness, slurring, bullying, and meanness that happens with it. I wouldn't want my kids to see ME being treated the way I get treated when she gets drunk because I don't want them to think that's acceptable behaviour and I would also hate for them to be the focus of any of that ill-will.

This is kind of a side-note, but my mom used to baby-sit for this one family. She'd go out for smoke breaks with the toddler in a stroller and call the cigarettes "faggatonies" in case the toddler decided to mention them to the parents so the parents wouldn't know she smoked!!

OMG, so funny! I am dying! It is also kind of horrifying that so many people are so bad with money. We have a very modest, working-class income, but live well within our means and have a comfortable savings (which we invest in short-term savings bonds and such). I don't feel rich or poor. Just normal. I think most people with our income feel poor, though. [My sister makes about 4x as much and is out her asparagus in debt and has no savings and always complains about not having enough money, but then turns around and goes on vacations all the time (and not £12/night Travelodge vacations like we do) and buys tons of shiitake. I'm not even sure where all her money is going, but she came to visit once and all her credit cards were bouncing and she had 9 cents in her bank account (and she was single and childless at the time). My parents are totally bankrolling her, too. (They've bought her two new cars and paid for half of one of her houses.)]

(Also, because this is the random thread, I won a £3000k gift card to a furniture store! I am buying some very badly needed dining chairs (and getting rid of our two tattered ones that I tried to reupholster, but look shoddy again). I also bought a globe for the kids and a salt & pepper grinder (ours just broke).)

That urban baby post is crazy! I am a little horrified at myself sometimes though because although my income has increased by about $15K over the last 3 years we STILL don't have any extra money at the end of the month! I need to take a class about budgeting I think. :) But even with that said I don't feel poor - just average - and if I ever get my student loans paid off, well then I will RICH beyond my wildest dreams ;)

By those urban baby standards of several hundred grand a year being "poor," we are pretty much one step away from Darfur refugee salaries, so who am I to talk, but at the moment I actually feel like we're pretty wealthy because we don't have to worry about how we'll pay bills. We rent our home and drive a 10 year old car so we are pretty free of big obligations.

One thing I'm really proud of is that I've gradually increased our savings over the last few years to the point where we're now saving 25-33% of my husband's income (a hard thing to measure exactly with military pay, thus the range). And here's how:

Automatically withdraw a certain amount each month to savings.Whenever he gets a raise, any kind of increase in pay, that extra amount goes straight into a bump in how much we save. We never see it, we never miss it. The way military pay works he gets mini-raises 1-3x/year, and each little bump helps.His annual bonus goes straight into savings as well. Never see it, never miss it.Once a year (between January and April) we take money out of our checking accounts to max out our Roth IRA contributions for the previous year. This ends up with us feeling super poor for a while and spending less, because our checking balances are suddenly very low. It's a nice self-imposed lean spending time after the holiday gifting orgies.My husband doesn't get any kind of 401k-style matching, so if we had that we'd probably max met contributions as well, but no such luck...

I think the problem for a lot of people, and us before I was vigilant about shoving money away before we even saw it, is that spending is like a gas: it expands to fit the container it's put into. ;)

I made carrot muffins earlier last week and B was all, "we need a candle! It a birthday today!"So we were, like, "whose birthday is it?""Mine!"

It was Mr. Crabby's birthday on Sunday. Not only did the smell of the cupcakes (vanilla-almond with ganache frosting and a glacé cherry) give the surprise away, but Beetroot shouting, "I wanna blow it* out!" (before we walked in the room) did, too. * The candle.

that is horrifying. how someone with two homes or a full time nanny could justify calling themselves poor is beyond me. i live in a wealthy upstate community where a lot of people have nannies, send their kids to private daycare, own massive homes, and generally make/spend far more money than our family sees in a year (or several). even so, it's never been lost on me that i live very comfortably, and i would never consider us poor just because so many people around us are obscenely rich.

_________________Gwyneth Paltrow: "I'm superstitious. Whenever I start a new movie I kill a hobo with a hammer."

That urban baby place is sad. I guess those kind of people will never be happy. I feel bad for their kids, especially when I see the poll results:

Quote:

Question: Do you 'enjoy' spending time with your kids? I really don't enjoy it at all, and wish I could spend less time with them 41%Yes, most of the time we really have fun together 24% Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's really dull and aggravating 19% Honestly most of the time it's not fun at all, but it's not supposed to be fun 15% Total Respondents: 40,214

_________________I'm not asking for utopian dreams...just a little peace in this world. That's a logical thing. - Deee-Lite

That is really sad. I would say that most of the time I love spending time with Grey. The only time that isn't true is when he wakes up at 5:30 and wants to party and I have only slept like 2 hours. Yeah, then I am not crazy about playing withhim. Then he smiles, game changer.

Also, Nate makes really good money but we both have student loans and a high rent payment. I still recognize that we are doing better than most people and I am truly thankful for that.

That Urban Baby post makes me sad for those people. We are definitely on the lower end of middle class, we're a couple thousand a year over the 'poverty line' and qualify for government help in some areas (like medical care for poopiebaby), but we have a roof over our heads and food to eat and a car to drive, and there were times in my childhood when we didn't have any of those things, so I would never call us poor.

This is a pet peeve of mine. I have friends who go on and on about how poor they are, but they own their own homes, have jobs, go on vacations, have brand-new Macbooks and iPhones. And some of them don't realize how much of a privilege it is to have family with money nearby to support you if something goes wrong. They are never going to be homeless, because there are people who are going to take them in. not the case for so many of the truly poor.

My husband and I don't make much at this point, but have our own home, have savings, have the luxury that I can choose to stay home with our kid, and are so grateful for what we have and don't focus on what we lack. I used to make a solid 6 figure salary, but am so glad to be home with Leela, that I don't mind giving it up, and she is always going to come first from here on

_________________My oven is bigger on the inside, and it produces lots of wibbly wobbly, cake wakey... stuff. - The PoopieB.

Weird! I'd consider us safely middle class and comfortable even though combined we make about 70k. I've seen actual poverty and am completely confused how somebody with two homes can complain when many don't even have one..

Those poll answers are really stupid but it is still sad anyway. Wouldn't it be funny to have a Scared Straight type of show where actual poor people talk about their lives? (I have to take the bus if I want to go grocery shopping and then I bring the groceries home on a cart or with my bike, bisque.) I don't have a source at this moment but I heard (on npr?) that the poor are happier in certain areas of life and give to charity more generously than anybody else.

Those poll answers are really stupid but it is still sad anyway. Wouldn't it be funny to have a Scared Straight type of show where actual poor people talk about their lives? (I have to take the bus if I want to go grocery shopping and then I bring the groceries home on a cart or with my bike, bisque.) I don't have a source at this moment but I heard (on npr?) that the poor are happier in certain areas of life and give to charity more generously than anybody else.

We carry our groceries home in backpacks and big bags! It's not so bad once you get used to it, although I hate that I can't take advantage of some sales (Morrisons are rebranding their value range and 2 big bags of self-raising flour were as cheap a postage stamp!. It takes an hour and a half (1 hour bus plus train) to get to the good grocery stores -- I hate that, but it's worth it to live in our (cheap and big) flat in the country. Technically, we are below the poverty level, but not really.* And we live this way pretty much by choice. We are way, way happier than the much, much wealthier people in my family and certainly like our kids much more than the people in that poll!

* Also, I think saying people live in poverty in a first world country is a load of shiitake, when most people's toilet and radiator water here is potable and kids are dying from dirty water in 3rd world countries. I'm going to stop there or else I'll go on a terrible tirade.